1. Field of the Invention
This application relates to a power-line-communication (PLC) enabled device, and more specifically to a wall-embedded PLC device connecting with the home network backbone through the PLC technology to integrate required functions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With continuous expansion and maturation of the Internet, “Computing” has been gradually transited from a device-centric model, a simple server-client model, to a cloud-client collaboration model. With the development of technology, applications are not bound to people and devices. The new structure of Devices, Networks and Applications (DNA) will support the new-generation applications. The rich capabilities of the “DNA” model come from the multi-way interactions between “People”, “Devices” and “Applications” over the “Networks”.
In the “DNA” model, a device is no longer only to passively execute the received commands. It can actively contribute the valued data to the applications or the other devices for the more precise analysis or more user-friendly presences of the applications to the people. In the term of “DNA”, “Network” is one of the major cores to support the success of “DNA”. Therefore, how to set up a seamless, all-connected-together network becomes as a quite important issue, such as, offering an intuitive way in the accessing the multimedia data stored in the home Network-attached Storage (NAS) from the Internet, or informing you of an urgent event immediately when the smoke sensor in your home is triggered no matter where you are.
To plan the End-to-End Networks is very complicated and needs to be categorized. A Home Network is a major category with which to be concerned. In a home environment, the home network can be roughly categorized as a Wide Area Network (WAN), a Local Area Network (LAN), and a Home Area Network (HAN). Using the WAN, for example, xDSL, xPON, or 3G/LTE, is mainly for connecting to the Internet. Using the LAN, for example, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or HomePlugAV, usually is a kind of high-speed communication technology, and mainly applies to construction of the home-network backbone or to provide a networked connection for an object (device) for the high-speed applications, such as, media streaming. The HAN, for example, Z-Wave, ZigBee, Bluetooth, HomePlug GreenPHY, and so on, usually is a kind of suitable-speed, but, low-powered communication technology, and mainly applies to build up the control/sensor network.
The HAN network is beginning to be present in a home network and ready to fulfill the new coming “Smart-Home” services, like Smart Energy, e-Health, Home Automation and so on. A lot of HAN technologies already exist in the market, but none currently dominates. In general, the different types of HAN technologies are applied to different services. For example, Bluetooth plays as a major HAN technology in Health-relative applications. But for home-automation services, Zigbee, Z-Wave, or others are preferred. Therefore, in the real deployment, it is quite impossible to fulfill multiple applications by only one technology in the home environment. Hierarchically planning the home network by the different, heterogeneous technologies over the different transmission media, ex. wireless, power-line, coaxial cable, phone line, and so on, is the better way.